De Consideratione

1. Well, then, where shall I begin? I prefer to begin with your occupations, because it is in these that I most chiefly share your sorrow. Share, I say, for I take it for granted that you have sorrow; otherwise I ought rather to have said 'I sorrow', since where there is no sorrow one cannot share it. Accordingly, if you grieve, I grieve with you; if you do not, still I grieve, and deeply, because I know that the member which is past feeling is all the farther from health, and that the sick man who is unconscious of his sickness is in the more dangerous condition. But God forbid that I should have any such suspicion about you. I know how keenly, not long ago, you used to enjoy the luxury of a quiet life. You cannot so soon have changed your habits; you cannot all at once extinguish your regret for the pleasures so recently taken from you. The fresh wound must be painful. The wound has not already hardened, or in so short a time become past feeling. However this may be, unless you dissemble, your daily losses are sufficient reason for continual grief. If I am not mistaken, you are reluctantly torn from the embraces of your Rachel,¹ and as often as that befalls you your sorrow must be renewed. But when does that not happen? How often do you wish, and in vain? How often do you move, but not move forward? How often do you attempt, and without result? strive, and do not obtain? How often are you in labour, and do not bring forth? venture out to sea, but drift away? where you begin, there make an end? Just as you are beginning to grow, do they not cut you down?² ‘The children have come to the birth,’ saith the prophet, ‘and there is not strength to bring forth.’³ Do you know this? No one better. You are a man of shameless face, and like the heifer, Ephraim, have learnt to love treading out the corn,⁴ if, with your consent, things go thus with you. God forbid ! This is the portion of him who is given over to a reprobate sense. I certainly long for you to have peace away from these, not in their company. There is nothing I dread more for you than that peace. Do you wonder if such peace could ever be yours ? Yes, I tell you, if, as mostly happens, habit passes into heedlessness.

2. Do not trust your present feelings too much. There is nothing so rooted in the heart but it may by neglect in process of time lose its force and vigour. If you neglect the old wound it grows callous, and in proportion as it loses feeling it becomes incurable. In fact, severe unceasing pain cannot last long ; if it is not got rid of some other way, it must of necessity be conquered by itself. Beyond a doubt it will either be relieved by some remedy, or it will end in stupefaction. Custom turns everything upside down. Give it time, and what can resist its hardening effect ? What does not yield to use ? How many find that the bitterness they had formerly dreaded has unfortunately through use alone turned to sweetness ? Hear how the just man laments over this : ‘ What things my soul refused to touch are now through want become my food.’¹ At first something will seem to you unbearable ; as time goes on, and you get used to it, you will judge it of no such great importance ; a little later you will think it even unimportant ; a little later you will not think it even that ; a little later it will delight you. Thus little by little our hearts are hardened, and then we loathe goodness. Just so, severe unceasing pain must, as I have said, have a speedy ending ; it will either be cured, or insensibility will ensue.

3. This is precisely why I have always feared, and still fear, that if you delay to apply the remedy, you will not endure the pain, and that you may thus incur the risk of being irrevocably and hopelessly overwhelmed. I am afraid, I say, lest, surrounded by occupations so numerous that you distrust your power of getting through them, you may harden your forehead, and thus gradually in a measure strip yourself of the feeling of a just and profitable sorrow. It would be far more prudent for you to even leave them for a time, than suffer yourself to be carried away by them, and certainly by degrees led whither you would not. Do you ask whither ? I reply, to a hard heart. Do not further ask what that means ; if you have not greatly feared it, it is yours already. That heart alone is hard which does not shudder at itself for not feeling its hardness. Why ask me ? Ask Pharaoh. No one ever got his hard heart cured unless God haply took pity on him, and, according to the prophet, removed his heart of stone and gave him a heart of flesh.² What then is a hard heart? It is a heart which is not torn by remorse, nor softened by affection, nor moved by entreaties; which does not yield to threats, but is hardened by scourges. It is ungrateful for kindnesses, faithless in counsel, cruel in judgement, shameless in disgrace, without sense of fear in the midst of danger, inhuman in things human, heedless in things divine; it forgets the past, neglects the present, does not look on to the future. It is a heart emptied of all the past except the wrongs it has suffered, which lets slip all the present, which has no forecast of the future, no preparation to meet it, unless perchance it be with a view to gratifying its malice. And, that I may briefly sum up the mischief of this dreadful plague, it is a heart which neither fears God nor respects man. See whither these accursed occupations can drag you at their heels, if, as you have begun, you continue to give yourself wholly to them, and leave nothing of yourself for yourself. You are wasting time; and, if I may present myself to you in the character of another Jethro, you,³ like Moses, are spending yourself in this foolish labour over these things which are nothing else but torture of spirit, the enfeebling of the mind, the voiding of grace. For the fruit of these things, what is it but spiders' webs?

4. Tell me, pray, what is the good of litigating from morning till evening, or of listening to litigants? And would that sufficient unto the day were the evil thereof! The nights are not free. There is hardly enough time left to give the poor body a little rest and satisfy the needs of nature ; once again up ! and to the strife. Day vomits forth lawsuits unto day, and night declares evil unto night, until it is not possible to take breath in goodness, nor snatch a little rest by way of change, nor find even a few scattered intervals of leisure. I have no doubt that you as well as I deplore these things ; but what is the good of that if you do not strive to amend them ? Still, until you do amend them, I exhort you to go on ever deploring them, and not allow yourself to grow hardened in them through any familiarity with them or unremitting application to them. ‘ I have smitten them,’ saith God, ‘ and they have not grieved.’¹ Have nothing in common with such persons. Rather make it your care to appropriate both the feeling and the words of the righteous man who says, ‘ What is my strength that I should endure ? or what is mine end, that I should be patient ? My strength is not the strength of stones, nor is my flesh of brass.’² Great is the virtue of patience ; but I could not wish for you patience in these things. It is sometimes more laudable to be impatient. You surely do not approve of the patience of those people to whom Paul was wont to say, ‘ Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.’³ Unless I am deceived, the Apostle spoke ironically, not by way of praise ; he is flouting the tameness of certain individuals, who, as it were, put out their hands to the false apostles by whom they had been seduced, and allowed themselves most patiently to be carried away by their teachers into all sorts of strange and corrupt doctrines. And so he adds, ‘ For ye endure if a man bring you into bondage.’⁴ Patience is not good, if, when you may be free, you allow yourself to become a slave. I would not have you disguise the slavery into which, though you know it not, you are daily brought. It is a sign of a heart waxed gross, that it does not feel its own continual vexation. ‘Vexation causes a report to be understood,’ saith one.⁵ True; but only if it be not excessive. For if it be, it clearly does not cause the mischief to be understood, but to be despised. In fact, when the wicked man reaches the depths of wickedness, he despiseth it.⁶ Rouse yourself, therefore, and not only guard against, but dread, the yoke of the worst of all slaverys at this very moment threatening you, nay rather already pressing with no light weight upon you. Are you therefore not a slave because you are the slave not of one but of all? There is no more disgraceful slavery, none worse, than that of the Jews; whithersoever they go they drag the chain, and everywhere displease their masters. Tell me, pray, when you are ever free, ever safe, ever your own. Everywhere is bustle, noise, and confusion; everywhere the yoke of your slavery galls you.

5. And you must not confront me with the Apostle’s saying, ‘Though I were free from all I made myself the bond-servant of all.’¹ That is far from being your case. Did he by this service make himself the slave of men in their acquisition of filthy lucre? Did men full of ambition, avaricious, simoniacal, sacrilegious, keepers of concubines, incestuous, all sorts of human monsters such as these, come streaming to him from all over the world, so that by means of his apostolic authority they might obtain, or retain, ecclesiastical distinctions? The reason why the man to whom to live was Christ, and to die was gain—the reason why he made himself a bondservant was that he might gain the more for Christ, not that he might increase the gains of avarice. You must not, therefore, make Paul's great shrewdness, zeal, and love so free, a plea for the life of a slave which you lead. How much more worthy of your apostleship, how much more wholesome for your conscience, how much more fruitful for the Church of God, if you would rather attend to his words elsewhere, 'Ye are bought with a price, refuse to be made the servants of men.'² What is more servile and unworthy, specially of the chief pontiff, than, I do not say every day, but almost every hour, to toil at such things, and for such people? When, then, are we to pray? when to teach our people? when to build up the Church? when to meditate in the law? I know, of course, that the palace every day re-echoes with the sound of the laws, but they are the laws of Justinian,³ not those of the Lord. Is that as it ought to be? See for yourself. Surely, the law of the Lord is undefiled, converting souls.⁴ But these are not so much laws as lawsuits and sophistical arguments subverting judgement. How is it then, pray tell me, that you the shepherd and bishop of souls can endure to have the law of the Lord stand dumb before you, while these laws never cease to chatter? I am mistaken if this perversity does not cause you some anxiety. I suppose that sometimes it even makes you cry to the Lord with the prophet, ‘The wicked have told me tales, but not according to Thy law.’⁵ Go then, and dare to profess yourself a free man while you have this heavy load of inconsistency upon your shoulders, from which you cannot escape. For if you have the power and not the will, so much the more are you the slave of this very perverse will of yours. Is he not a slave who is ruled by iniquity? He is the worst of all slaves. Unless, perchance, in your judgement there is less dishonour in being governed by a vice than by a man. What difference does it make whether you serve willingly or against your will? For though compulsory slavery be more pitiable, slavery deliberately sought is more lamentable. ‘And what,’ say you, ‘do you wish me to do?’ I would have you give yourself some respite from these occupations. ‘Impossible,’ you will perhaps reply; ‘I could more easily bid farewell to the chair.’ A good reply if I were urging you to break them off altogether, and not rather to have some break in them.

6. Let me then put before you my rejoinder, and offer you my advice. If you give all your life and all your wisdom to action, and nothing to consideration, do I praise you? in this I praise you not. I suppose no one would who has heard Solomon's words, ‘He that hath little business shall become wise.’¹ Action itself certainly does not fare well unless preceded by consideration. If you wish to belong altogether to other people, like him who was made all things to all men,² I praise your humanity, but only on condition that it be complete. But how can it be complete if you yourself are left out? You, too, are a man. So then, in order that your humanity may be entire and complete, let your bosom, which receives all, find room for yourself also. Otherwise, according to the word of the Lord, what does it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own self?³ Wherefore, though all possess you, take care that you are one among them. Why are you alone defrauded of your reward? How long will you be ‘a wind that passeth away and cometh not again’?⁴ Will the time never come when you will in turn receive yourself among the rest? You are a debtor both to the wise and to the foolish; and are you the only one to whom you deny yourself? Wise and foolish, bond and free, rich and poor, male and female, old and young, cleric and layman, righteous and wicked, all alike share in you, all drink at the public fountain of your heart; and will you stand apart and thirst? If he is cursed who impairs his inheritance, what are we to say of him who strips himself of it altogether? By all means let your waters stream down into the streets; let men and flocks and herds drink thereof, nay let the servants of Abraham give drink even to the camels; but among the rest do you yourself drink of the water of your own well. ‘Let not a stranger’, saith the Scripture, ‘drink thereat.’⁵ Are you a stranger? To whom are you not a stranger, if you are one to yourself? In short, if a man is bad to himself, to whom is he good?⁶ So remember, I do not say always, I do not say often, but at least sometimes, to restore yourself to yourself. Among the many, or at all events after the many, do you also make use of yourself. Can I make a more liberal concession to you? For what I say, I say to spare you, not according to my strict judgement. I suppose that in this respect I am more indulgent even than the Apostle himself. ‘More, then,’ you reply, ‘than I ought to be.’ I do not deny it. But suppose the Apostle’s standard be the right one, it matters not, for I am confident you will not be satisfied with my timid outline⁷ of your duty, but will more abound. It is certainly more fitting that you should abound than that I should be too bold. I also think it safer for myself in dealing with your Majesty to err on the side of timidity than of rashness. And perhaps this is the way a wise man should be admonished if the Scripture is to be fulfilled—‘Give a wise man an opportunity and he will be still wiser’.⁸

7. Still I would have you hear what the Apostle thinks about this. ‘Is it so that there is not a wise man among you,’ he says, ‘who may judge between brother and brother?’¹ And he adds, ‘I say this to move you to shame; those who are of less account in the church, set them to judge.’² So, according to the Apostle, apostolic man though you are, you usurp a mean office unworthy of you, and descend to the level of those who are of less account. Hence it is that as bishop, instructing a bishop, the Apostle said, ‘No soldier of God entangleth himself in the affairs of this life.’³ But I spare you. For my aim is not to speak strongly, but to point out what is possible. Do you think the times would endure it, if, when men are wrangling over an earthly inheritance, and are clamouring for your judgement, you were to answer them in the words of your Lord, ‘Men, who made Me a judge over you?’⁴ What sort of a judgement would be pronounced on you? Something like this—‘What says this ignorant boor, disregarding his primacy, dishonouring the sovereign see, disparaging the apostolic dignity?’ And yet, I suppose, the critics could not point to a single instance of an apostle sitting as a judge of men, a fixer of land-marks, or a distributor of lands. In fact I read that the apostles stood to be judged, not that they sat to judge.⁵ The time for judging will come; it is not yet. Does the servant really degrade himself if he does not wish to be greater than his lord, or the disciple if he does not wish to be greater than he who sent him, or a son if he does not overpass the bounds which his fathers set? ‘Who made Me a judge?’⁶ said our great Lord and Master. And shall any wrong be done to the servant and disciple if he does not judge all mankind? In my opinion the man who thinks it unworthy of apostles or apostolic men, to whom judgement over greater matters has been committed, to refrain from judging in these smaller ones, does not understand the relative value of things. Why should they not scorn to give judgement concerning men’s poor earthly possessions, seeing that they shall judge heavenly things, and angels too? Your jurisdiction, therefore, is over criminal cases, not over property; if indeed it is for the former purpose, not for the latter, that you have received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which will, I presume, shut out men because they are transgressors, not because they are owners of property. ‘That ye may know,’ our Lord says, ‘that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins.’⁷ Which seems to you the greater dignity and power, that of forgiving sins, or that of dividing estates? The truth is that there is no comparison between them. These lower earthly things have their own judges, the kings and princes of the earth. Why trespass on another man’s province? Why put your sickle into another man’s harvest? Not that men in your position are unworthy, but because to devote yourselves to such matters when you have enough to do with better is unworthy of you. Finally, where necessity requires, this is what the Apostle thinks—‘If the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?’⁸

8. But it is one thing now and then for some urgent reason to turn aside to these matters; it is another of your own accord to apply yourself to them as if they were of such importance as to deserve the earnest attention of your exalted rank. Accordingly, if I wished to speak strongly, or with perfect sincerity say all that is right, I should say all that I have said and a vast deal besides. But as things are, for the days are evil,¹ it is enough now that you have been admonished not to give yourself up altogether, nor at all times, to the active life, but to set apart some portion of your heart and of your time for consideration. But in saying this I have regard to the necessity laid upon you, not to the claims of righteousness : albeit there is no unrighteousness in yielding to necessity. For if the fitting were possible, reason unanswerably shows that piety, which is profitable for all things, should under all conceivable circumstances be distinctly preferred, and that it ought, either alone or above all else, to be studiously cultivated. Do you ask what piety is? It is leaving time for consideration. You may perhaps tell me that herein I differ from him who defines piety as ‘the worship of God’.² I do not really differ from him. If you well consider the point you will find that I have expressed his meaning in my own words, only partly, however, I admit. What is so essential to the worship of God as the practice to which He exhorts in the psalm, ‘Be still and see that I am God’?³ This certainly is the chief object of consideration. Is anything, in all respects, so influential as consideration? Does it not by a kindly anticipation create the divisions of the active life itself, in a manner rehearsing and arranging beforehand what has to be done? There must be consideration lest haply affairs which foreseen and premeditated might turn out well, may, if precipitated, be fraught with peril. I have no doubt, if you will recall the incidents, you will find that in law cases, important business of various kinds, or in weighty deliberations, you have yourself frequently had this sorrowful experience. First of all, consideration purifies the very fountain, that is the mind, from which it springs. Then it governs the affections, directs our actions, corrects excesses, softens the manners, adorns and regulates the life, and, lastly, bestows the knowledge of things divine and human alike. It is consideration that brings order out of disorder, puts in the links, pulls things together, investigates mysteries, traces the truth, weighs probabilities, exposes shams and counterfeits. It is consideration which arranges beforehand what is to be done, and ponders what is accomplished, so that nothing faulty, or needing correction, may settle in the mind. It is consideration which in prosperity feels the sting of adversity, in adversity is as though it felt not; the one is fortitude, the other is prudence.

9. And herein you may observe a delightfully harmonious connexion between the virtues, and their dependence one upon another. In the present instance, for example, Prudence is the mother of Fortitude, nor ought any deed of daring to be called fortitude, but rather rashness, if it be not the child of prudence. It is consideration, too, which sits as it were umpire of the strife between our pleasures and our necessities, settles the boundaries on either side, allotting and allowing to the latter what is sufficient, taking from the former what is excessive, and then from both fashioning a third virtue known as Temperance. For consideration deems the man who denies himself what is necessary no less intemperate than the man who indulges to excess. Temperance, therefore, consists not only in cutting down superfluities, but in allowing necessities. The Apostle appears to be not merely the supporter of this view, but its author, for he teaches us that the care of our flesh is not perfected in the gratification of its desires.¹ When he says that the 'care of the flesh is not perfected', he checks all excess; when he adds 'in the gratification of its desires', he does not exclude what is necessary. I therefore think there is good sense in the definition of Temperance given by the writer who tells us that it neither cuts off what is necessary, nor goes beyond it. This agrees with the philosopher's maxim, 'Moderation in all things.'

10. Now as regards Justice, which is one of the four, is it not certain that there must be previous consideration in order that Justice may be a mental habit? The mind must first reflect upon itself in order that it may frame a rule of Justice, and not be inclined to do to another what it would not have done to itself, nor refuse to another what it desires for itself. These two assuredly comprise the whole sphere of Justice. But Justice does not abide alone. Permit me to point out to you the beautifully close and harmonious connexion which exists between it and Temperance, and between both these and the two former virtues, Prudence and Fortitude. For if it be a part of Justice to refrain from doing to another man what we would not have done to ourselves, and if perfect Justice,² as our Lord says, consists in doing to other men whatsoever we would they should do to us, neither of these will be possible unless the will itself, which entirely determines the nature of an action, be so ordered that it neither desires anything superfluous, nor superstitiously refuses anything necessary; and this is the work of Temperance. In a word, if Justice itself is to be just, it must be regulated by Temperance. 'Be not righteous over much' saith the wise man,³ showing us hereby that Justice without the curb and restraint of Temperance is by no means to be approved. It is noteworthy that Wisdom itself does not refuse the bridle of Temperance, for Paul, according to the wisdom given to him by God, bids us not to be wiser than we ought, but to be soberly wise.⁴ But, on the other hand, that Temperance cannot dispense with Justice, our Lord shows us in the Gospel, when He rebukes the temperance of those who abstained that they might seem to men to fast.⁵ There was temperance in respect of food, but there was not justice in the heart, because their aim was not to please God but to please men. Again, how can you have either one or the other unless you have Fortitude, since Fortitude, and no slight Fortitude, is required, if what you desire, and what you decline, are to be confined to the narrow channel which lies between too little on the one side, and too much on the other, so that the will may be content with that bare, unmixed, unalloyed, consistent, nicely balanced, as it were neatly trimmed, moderation, which alone, we are agreed, partakes of the quality of virtue.

11. Tell me, pray, if you can, to which particularly of these three virtues you think this middle place should be given, which so borders upon all that it seems to belong to each. Are virtue and the mean identical? If so, virtue would not be manifold, but all the virtues would be included in one. Is it not better to maintain that unless the mean be kept there can be no virtue? and that this middle region of which we speak is in a sense the very pith and marrow of all virtues, wherein they are so united that they must all seem to be one, all the more because by sharing in it they do not divide it, but it is as an unbroken whole the property of each? For example, what is so characteristic of Justice as Moderation? This is so certain, that if Justice be tainted with excess, it clearly does not give to every man his due ; yet this giving to every man his due is the very object of Justice. Again, what is more characteristic of Temperance, which is surely what it is for no other reason than that it allows nothing immoderate ? But you will, I suppose, admit that the observance of the mean is no less a mark of Fortitude. Is not Fortitude above all things necessary to put forth its power and rescue Moderation from the assaults of vices which on every side try to strangle it ? And once it is free, is it not Fortitude that makes it a solid foundation of goodness, and the abode of virtue ? Therefore, to keep the mean is Justice, Temperance, Fortitude. Perhaps the difference between them may be thus stated—Justice is concerned with the affections ; Fortitude makes Justice efficacious ; possession as well as use are the domain of Temperance. It remains for us to show that Prudence is not excluded from this communion of the virtues. Is it not Prudence which first discovers and gives attention to Moderation when it has been too long neglected and despised, imprisoned as it were through the jealousy of the vices, and hidden out of sight in the darkness of inveterate habit ? Why do I tell you this ? Few pay attention to Prudence because few possess it. So Justice seeks, Prudence finds, Fortitude frees, Temperance possesses. I do not propose to now discuss these virtues, but this much I would say because I am urging you to find some time for consideration, through whose kindly service these and such like truths receive the attention they deserve. To bestow no labour in life on securing leisure so pious and so profitable, is not this to lose life itself ?

12. But suppose you were unexpectedly to devote yourself entirely to this philosophy. Your predecessors were not wont so to do; you will be a nuisance to all the world, inasmuch as you are not walking in the footsteps of your fathers; and, what is more, it will seem as though your conduct were designed to flout them. Besides this, you will be a target for the familiar proverb—‘the man who does what nobody else does is a marvel to everybody’; it will be hinted that you have a passion for admiration. And you cannot all at once, or altogether, either correct the faults of your critics or moderate their excesses. After a time you will be able, according to the wisdom given to you by God, little by little and as occasion offers, to take the business in hand. Meanwhile, by all means turn another man’s badness to good account; this you can do. Still, if we are to follow that which is good, not that which is new, there have not been wanting Roman pontiffs who found leisure in the midst of the weightiest affairs. When the city was besieged, and the sword of the barbarians was over the necks of the citizens, was Pope Gregory thereby deterred from writing words of wisdom at his leisure? At that very time, forsooth, as appears from his preface, he expounded with no less diligence than elegance the concluding and most obscure portion of Ezekiel.

13. ‘Very good’, you say, ‘but different customs now prevail, we live in other days, and men’s manners have changed; dangerous times are not only coming but have come. Deceit, and guile, and violence have grown strong upon the earth. Pettifoggers abound, a defender¹ of the right is rare, everywhere the strong oppress the poor; we dare not fail to succour the oppressed, we cannot refuse justice to the sufferers. Unless causes are pleaded, and both sides heard, how can judgement be given between the parties.’ My reply is this—Let the causes be pleaded, but in the proper way. For the prevalent practice is most execrable, and such as does not become even the forum, let alone the Church. It is a marvel to me how your religious ears can bear to listen to the disputes of advocates² of this class, and to their battles of words, which avail more to the subversion of the truth than to its discovery. Correct the corrupt custom, cut off the tongues that speak vanity, close the deceitful lips. These are they who have taught their tongue to utter lies ; they are clever in withstanding justice, learned in defending falsehood. They are wise to do evil, eloquent to assail the truth. These are they who venture to instruct their teachers, who invent their facts, blackmail the innocent, destroy the simplicity of truth, obstruct the ways of judgement. Nothing so easily brings virtue to light as a brief and simple narrative. So then, when cases must come before you—they need not by any means all come—I should like you to decide them with care, but summarily, and so cut short these dilatory adjournments which mean nothing but the hunting of the prey. Let the cause of the widow come unto you, the cause of the poor, and of him who hath nothing to give. You will be able to hand over many other causes to various persons to dispose of ; the vast majority you will not deem even worthy of a hearing. For what need is there to admit to your presence men whose sins clearly go before to judgement? So gigantic is the impudence of some men, that though their causes bear on their very face the swarming scabs of ambition, they do not blush to demand a hearing, thus revealing themselves to the consciences of the multitude, a tribunal before which they would, as in the judgement of even their own conscience, be confounded. There was no one to check their effrontery; so the numbers grew, and they lost all sense of shame. But, oddly enough, a vicious man does not shun the consciences of other vicious men, and where all are filthy, the stench of one is hardly noticed. For instance, when did an avaricious man ever blush for another avaricious man, the unclean for the unclean, the luxurious for the luxurious? The Church is full of ambitious men; the time has gone by for being shocked at the enterprising efforts of ambition; we think no more of it than a robber's cave thinks of the spoils of the wayfarers.